It could if someone ever got the incentive to restore passenger service!! However, we need to get our act together and renew our passenger trains. Look at the AMTRAK map. Vermont has better service than Florida.
National Association of Rail Passenger can give you more info...
I spent 32 years working for a state DOT. Part of my job involved analyzing the cost-effectiveness of various travel modes. Let me give your questions a shot.
1. Why can’t private passenger trains operate like plane companies? ANSWER: To an extent they do. However, they lack the volume to make the service competitive. Our modern society demands speed. Trains cannot deliver this speed.
2. Why don’t we rip up some old tracks and turn them into true high-speed elevated rail that travels at 500 kilometers/hr? ANSWER: This would be enormously expensive. An elevated line would be the equivalent of a continous bridge. It would also be redundant. We already have a 500 mph transportation system with a relatively inexpensive infrastructure—the commercial airlines.
3. Why is Amtrack, as it is now, so inefficient and crappy when train transportation is supposedly so efficient (CSX’s 430+miles/gallon fuel) ANSWER: Trains get their efficiency from accumulating traffic in bulk. Rail freight is considered to be “on time” if it arrives within 24 hours of its scheduled delivery time. Passengers would not be willing to sit on rail sidings waiting until an efficient number of passengers was accumulated for a cost-effective run.
4. There seems to be an inverse relationship of luxury to efficiency. Plane travel is torture, but it’s efficient. Train travel could be luxurious since it’s not fuel inefficient, but is time inefficient. Why is this ratio not considered for leisure travel? In other words, weight doesn’t seem like it should be a serious consideration in train travel like it is in air travel, so why don’t we have palatial luxury compartments? Is there a limit to the length of a passenger train? ANSWER: You have stumbled onto the one potentially viable option for rail passenger travel—as a luxury mode of travel. Passenger trains that operated like cruise lines could serve a relatively small share of the market. Trains could “cruise” over land and stop at “ports” for some off-train activity before they resume their run. Of course, the cost would be very high, but since it would include mobile lodging it could be an attractive vacation option. Trains can be very long. Sometimes there are freight trains over a mile in length. So it’s conceivable that a lengthy luxury passenger train could be put into operation. However, there would be logistical complexities that would impede the speed and convenience (i.e., difficulty parking the train at a passenger station). Whether there would be enough demand to warrant the effort to overcome these complexities is unknown.
5. Is Amtrack not as bad as I think it is? (All I know is I thought maybe I’d take a train on a leisure trip, but found the prices were outrageous, at least compared to flying.) ANSWER: Amtrak is probably worse than you think. It is trying to serve a demand that is essentially nonexistent. Because it is subsidized by the government it is forced toward inefficiencies in order to meet political demands. As long as it continues in its current ownership/operational mode it will never offer an attractive or efficient product.
Freight has always been more profitable than passenger service (even on airlines)for the most part.
Private roads are much more efficient because they have to make a profit to survive.
The sleeper service on Amtrak is what is expensive. Book coach for day trips and it’s about the same price as flying but with none of the hassle. Of course, you and your destination would have to be on the system. Seating is as roomy as Business on the airlines, and you can move around easily, including the option of real food in a dining car.